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WE DANCED ALL NIGHT

A DAZZLING MEMOIR OF THE GLITTERING TWENTIES

The madcap '20s, as told by queen of romance Cartland (see also I Reach for the Stars, above, etc., etc., etc.). First published in England in 1970, this vivid memoir is quantifiably better than the caricature Cartland (both in her image and her work) of the past decade: a juicy social history of privileged youth after WW I. Cartland was 18 in 1920, and she was a flapperone of those ``enchanting, sexless, bosomless, hipless, thighless creatures'' with shingled hair and backless dresses. ``Flaming youth,'' says Cartland, was her generations's reaction to the misery of WW I. ``We couldn't bear all those anniversaries: `the anniversary of the day that Daddy was missing,' `the anniversary of the day that he was reported killed.' '' So the ``Bright Young People'' Vaselined their eyelids, raced motorcars down Pall Mall, and danced every night until dawn. Cartland paints a picture of elaborate artifice, wealth and the pretense of it, and glamour on the grandest scale: Gaby Deslys, whose knee-length ropes of pearls caused a peasant riot in Portugal; Paula Gellibrand, ``who sprang into fame by appearing at the Ritz in a hat covered with wisteria.'' And the most stylish of all: the Prince of Wales, who entered nightclubs behind a footman in a powdered wig. Cartland herself wasn't rich; she was a ``socialite'' who had to workbut, boy, did she have contacts. She became a sort of mascot to the ``Four Adventurers'': her boss Lord Beaverbrook, Winston Churchill, Sir James Dunn, and Lord Birkenhead. In a dutiful nod to the General Strike of 1926, Cartland acknowledges how clueless the ``smart set'' was about poverty and identifies the great problem of her age as the ``uninvited guest.'' A jaw-dropping account of a tribe who whitened their faces with powder, dressed in feathers, and broke each other's hearts at thÇ-dansants. (b&w photos)

Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1995

ISBN: 0-86051-925-2

Page Count: 312

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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